


Bloodstains

by CadetDru



Series: Heartbroken [2]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode Tag, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Shock, milagro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-02
Updated: 2014-07-02
Packaged: 2018-02-07 02:46:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1882164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CadetDru/pseuds/CadetDru





	Bloodstains

With Mulder's help, Scully managed to sit up on his floor. He crouched next to her, his eyes big and terrified. She closed her own eyes, and held him close. She'd had another near-death experience, another almost death. Hers or his, it had all blended together. There was too much of it, it was never stopping. 

Mulder got up, left her sitting there. She gasped at the absence. Her breathing slowed down. The crying stopped. The shaking stopped before she realized she had been. Shock was setting in, was fading, was fluttering around the edges of her consciousness. Something real had been taken from her, if not her actual heart. 

Mulder wrapped a blanket around her. She sunk back into him. "You need to go to the hospital," he said, breaking the heavy silence between them. The shattered pieces of it gathered, made the wall she kept around herself come back up. 

"No," Scully said making a choice to ignore the lack of a wound. Making a choice to dismiss the experience as little more than a bad dream. She'd spent enough time lately questioning her choices because some fool had held a distorted mirror up to her thoughts. She needed to let them lay back down, let the dust settle back over them all.

She leaned into Mulder more. He was real, he was unhurt (physically) by whatever it was that had just happened. They'd switch roles soon enough, he'd be the damaged bird and she'd be the healer again. The roles were easily exchanged, swapped. If this was a religious experience, then Scully would be the believer. If it was anything else, Mulder would. 

He was pushing for the habitual, normal, the mundane explanation. It would stop, he would come back to himself when she came back to herself. A mild case of transference was to be expected, under the circumstances. "You need to be examined. The blood..." 

"There's nothing wrong with me...nothing that happened. It's just..."

"Just spontaneous bleeding," he said. He was going to lead her down the path of questioning the basic reality of the world. 

"I don't want to be another X-file."

"You do it so well."

"I don't understand any of this," she admitted. Mulder didn't either, she knew, but he was used to it. He accepted it, relished the lack of knowledge. It presented him with a mystery to solve. 

Mulder rubbed her back. A soothing gesture, the perfect response for an assault victim from a trusted (loved?) one. 

"I'll go in a while." She didn't know if she meant that she would go to the hospital or she would go home. It felt all the same: Mulder's apartment wasn't safe, and she needed to get out of there just as soon as possible. "I need to clean up first."

Mulder seemed confused, but he rolled with the punches. "I'll get you some clothes."

A T-shirt, some sweatpants. It was ridiculously oversized on her. That was just a little too fitting, and it had certain implications. She went to the bathroom to shower and reconfigure her point of view. Stripping her blood-stained suit, the professional shield that had betrayed her again. The dry cleaner was getting suspicious. 

She did not sit under the running water and sob away her troubles. She would not be that person, that woman giving in to terror and fear. Not even to wash it all away. She would go in resolute and come out again. She was a steel knife, stained with blood temporarily and ready to be washed clean. 

She watched the blood swirl and wash off her skin. She would smell of Mulder's soap for a while later, but it wasn't necessarily a problem. She needed to escape being herself, being under attack. 

After the water turned cold, she took herself out of the shower and took a deep breath. Scully changed shirts. Scully sat quietly and waited for her world to make sense again.


End file.
